So this post is late. I mean really late, Like, these are Christmas presents in here, late. I was going to stagger all of this awesome out over several posts, but my habits have been so lax lately, I figured it was best to get them all out in one go. So here it is: the Massive(ly late) Christmas gift post.
First up, my brother’s Christmas present. He is quite a prosaic lad; what he wanted was $20 to buy a Steam game. What he got was $20 and a cross-stitched Portal sign:
This untruthful cake was only part of a whole incredible series of Portal warning signs by the Crafty Bikyclist, and they are all available as free patterns. Highly recommended for the geek in your life.
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For my Dad’s Christmas present, I went with a pattern I had bought some months previously. When I was hunting for patterns to make his birthday platypus, I found Planet June’s Sea Otter – way too adorable to resist!
I remembered (from childhood trips to the zoo) that Dad was fond of the cuteness of otters, so I crocheted this one, complete with clam-shell accessory. He now sits atop the TV, adorning it with his adorability.
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The last gift in the list was somewhat nerve-wracking – I wanted to cross-stitch a Christmas present for my boyfriend’s mum, who I was meeting for the first time. (Spoiler: We traveled over to visit in January, I met her and she is rad. We high-fived over cooking, craft and trashy novels.)
I planned the design concept very carefully – I didn’t want to stitch something offensive, but nor did I want to make something staid and boring. In the end, I decided on an old-school pattern from one of my ex-library books; I picked a black bird because I knew she loved animals, and because I wanted to put a twist in the whole “Nevermore” trope. The resulting cross-stitch was somewhat more upbeat than Poe:
I was very relieved when the pattern fit so neatly into this frame; I checked the size before starting, but didn’t take into account the curlicues of the leaves. Thankfully, it all worked out – the stitched leaves slotting neatly into the spaces left by the brass foliage.
As a gift, it was very successful – it turns out blackbirds are one of her favourites. When we left, it was on display next to her bird cage, perhaps to encourage the budgie to similar heights of ‘Awesome!’.
Crafty and Devious 